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Alison Kjertinge was 8 years old and a Grade 3 student in Mississauga in 1971 when she first laid eyes on a flight attendant. She thought she was the coolest, most beautiful creature in the world.

In those days, they were called stewardesses, and Kjertinge spent the entire Toronto to London flight mesmerized by the woman with pouffy hair and blue eyes who was so kind to her. Right then and there, she knew what she wanted to be when she grew up.

She’s done it. At 48, she flies with Air Canada and loves it, both the flying and the company. With an honours degree and four languages, she gets to fly international routes that include Sydney, Tokyo, Beijing and London.

What she doesn’t love is the monthly reviews of her budget that usually leave her tearing her hair out. She’s a divorced mother of two with 27 years at Air Canada who makes $46,300 a year when she flies.

“I’m very careful with a dollar, but we still live paycheque to paycheque,” Kjertinge said in a recent telephone interview from Guelph, where she was visiting family (she grew up in Mississauga). She flies out of Vancouver.

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“I’m not slamming Air Canada. I’m the best-case scenario and I have good routes, but if I’m struggling, I look at younger staffers who make much less and wonder how they do it. They started just like me — with stars in their eyes.”

Air Canada is in a labour dispute with its 6,800 flight attendants, who are members of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). The Conservative government blocked last week’s pending strike by going to the Canada Industrial Labour Board. The board has not ruled, and Labour Minister Lisa Raitt is expected to take further action when Parliament returns on Oct. 17 from its Thanksgiving break.

The political wrangling seems to have shifted the focus from the lives of flight attendants like Kjertinge, who cringe when they hear public comments about their supposedly glamorous lives and bulging pay packets.

Once the job was glamorous. Those days have returned to television with ABC’s retro Pan Am, starring Christina Ricci and a bevy of high-flying beauties marching through airports in sync, girdles and cute little caps firmly in place.

For Kjertinge in 2011, life is about jet lag after long flights, struggling to find time to spend with Anika, 12, and Dane, 17, scrimping on food budgets and eschewing such luxuries as cable TV, family vacations or a pet.

Here’s a taste of typical flights: on a Friday evening, she drives her used Honda CR-V from her small bungalow in Tsawwassen, a peninsula town just south of Vancouver, to the airport to catch AC Flight 33 to Sydney. She has a 24-hour layover in Australia before working Flight 34 back to Vancouver, with the time difference arriving Monday morning.

Or she might work Flight 3 to Tokyo, also leaving Friday and, after a 24-hour layover, work Flight 4 from Tokyo back to Vancouver, with the time difference arriving Sunday.

For her annual salary, she works about four of these blocks each month. Flight attendants are paid from “wheels up” to touchdown at their destination, but not for time spent waiting on the tarmac or for layovers.

Kjertinge says it’s important to stress she could work more hours and earn more money. “But I’d have to absolutely kill myself to do it and I’d have no time with my kids,” she says. “I just can’t make that sacrifice.”

Some flight attendants have no options, but these employees generally shy away from going on-the-record with the media. Employees with public union ties are more open.

Since January, Kjertinge has been on leave and serving as a vice-president of the CUPE local, for the experience and to put away some extra cash. But she’s returning to full-time flying at the beginning of the new year.

Kjertinge and her ex-husband share the children, with both spending time with them. However, he has his own place to maintain and she pays all bills on the little bungalow she bought years ago in Tsawwassen.

She calculated her cash flow with the Star and it shows that, after the mortgage payment, utilities, gas, insurance and food, she has about $200 left monthly. Typically that sum quickly disappears, leaving her in the red. This year’s high dental bills for one of the kids costing thousands of dollars over benefits provided through the union.

She’s also careful to put money away for her children’s education.

“It really feels like we’re treading water,” she says. “I know a lot of people must be in the same position, but it’s very scary. All I want to do is raise my kids and have a little bit of money extra for later. But I worry I won’t have that money.”

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